


Bedtime Stories

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Civil War references, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Inhumans (Marvel), Kid Fic, POV Phil Coulson, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Romance, Skoulson Romfest 2k16, corny too corny, marrieds!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 03:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5768851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of them is good at telling bedtime stories.</p><p>Skoulson RomFest 2k16: Day 2 - fairytales</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedtime Stories

**darkness**

It’s the third time the little girl stays in the Playground for the night.

Not the safest place in the world but someone like her, she’s not going to be safer where she is, anyway.

Bobbi frowns at the arrangement. Coulson smiles. He knows Bobbi is awkward around children - he himself doesn’t have that much experience, but he is good with them (though not as good as May, who even when she was young was a true children-whispered, under 10s seem to just flock to her in adoration). But it’s not that what worries Bobbi now.

“I’m surprised Daisy would keep these visits,” she says. “I see how she could relate to the situation -”

“It’s more than that,” Coulson tells her, looking over the plans for the weekend, trying to keep the operations to a minimum so the girl won’t have to feel the chaos around her. It’s a lost war, most people think, but Coulson is still intent on fighting it. “She feels responsible.”

“Because she saved her life?”

That’s part of it, and Coulson was in that op as well, one of the hardest due to the kind of power the girl had and how she was too young to control it. He feels responsible, too.

“It’s more than that,” he tells Bobbi. “It’s because Daisy thinks she caused it, she put the girl in this situation.”

“The Terrigen crystals,” Bobbi fills in.

He nods. It’s bad enough when it was someone like Joey, that managed to keep his powers in check pretty quickly. But kids… fortunately there wasn’t many of them (not many parents with the oil fish supplement to young children). It’s a whole new level of horrifying. And Daisy thinks it’s all on her. If fostering this little girl once in a while helps Daisy through that (and helps the girl) Coulson doesn’t mind turning the base upside down to accommodate her. It’s too small but preciasely because it’s too small he has to do it.

“It’s frustrating, not being able to do more,” Bobbi says, like she’s reading his thoughts, and Coulson notices her hands balled into fists.

“We’re trying,” he tells her. “Andrew is taking care of people like Gloria. We are still out there, aren’t we?”

He keeps telling himself what they do makes a difference. He has to. Or the speed at which they are bleeding people and resources, losing allies, taking hits - it would be too much.

“Sir, where are the parents?” Bobbi asks apprehensively. 

“Not in the picture.”

“How come?”

He takes a breath and smiles sadly at Bobbi before replying.

“The new emergency laws allow the parents of an _active_ Inhuman child to put them in the care of the state,” Coulson reminds Bobbi, flatly, not even pretending he is living anywhere else but in a dystopia.

“People are great,” Bobbi replies, dripping disgust.

Coulson gives her a tired shrug.

“Remember when all this started and we were talking about how maybe both sides of it had good points to make?” he asks.

“I remember,” Bobbi says, fidgeting with one of the Lola models on his desk. “Daisy almost vibrated all our heads when we did.”

“And rightly so.”

“She saw something we didn’t,” Bobbi says.

“She saw the same thing her mother saw,” Coulson states. For all her misguided methods Jiaying had managed bullseye about what was going to happen to her people. Daisy’s people now.

They stay in silence for a moment.

“What’s she like?”

“The little girl?” Bobbi nods. Coulson thinks about it. “Quiet. Very bright. Hurting.”

 _Kind of like Daisy_.

 

+

 

That afternoon she takes a break from babysitting duties and swings by for a drink.

Coulson swears this war will make all of them into lowkey alcoholics at this rate, and he worries, he worries about himself too, but it’s hard to give up those few minutes when a drink could take the edge off a bit, dull the knife-sharpness of the world they were trying to change. In Daisy’s case he’s not sure why she does it, given her surprising Inhuman stamina and the fact she never drinks more than one glass. He makes sure he is well stocked with bourbon anyway.

“You are getting a lot more gray in your hair,” she says when she takes the glass from him, touching her fingers to his temple a moment. She’s become quite physically affectionate with him of late. Coulson tells himself it’s because the battles don’t leave her room to share that with anyone else and Coulson is a safe bet. He doesn’t mind. He cherishes the way she’s become comfortable enough with him to do. He also kind of cherishes the way he doesn’t even think in rejecting it, how among all this darkness and destruction he has learned to be warm and open again. Daisy draws her hand back and smiles at him. “Not on account of me bringing a kid into a super secret facility, is it?”

Coulson shakes his head and sits down, Daisy mimicking him, sitting across his desk.

“Thank you for doing this,” she tells him.

He waves it away. She’s thanked him the other previous two times, and Coulson knows without a shadow of a doubt that she will still be thanking him even if it was the fiftieth time the girl stays over.

“Where is she now?” he asks.

“May is teaching her to _spar_.”

He smiles. “A bit young.”

“Yeah,” Daisy says, smiling.

Cynically he wonders how long before Gloria has to learn how to defend herself for real. And her powers, while useful once she learns how to control them, are not exactly aggressive. It can’t hurt, even as a kid so young, to spend some time under May’s tutelage. He knows she’s getting help with her powers in the halfway house, but May is good at teaching you to focus and relax.

“She’s lucky to have you,” Coulson points out.

Daisy actually blushes a bit. That girl has no one, right now, but she has Daisy. And he knows how she feels about that.

He knows Daisy has given up on the idea of having a family herself (has given up on the idea of intimate relationships altogether) and Coulson can’t blame her, given the state of the world. But he thinks she’s tragically young to be accepting that fate. When did Coulson himself gave up? He couldn’t have been much older than Daisy, if he thinks about it, so maybe he’s just being a hypocrite. He didn’t even had the excuse of knowing that whatever family he could have would be hunt down like animals just by being by her side.

He wishes he could do just a little bit more.

He’s about to say that, he’s about to get impulsive and emotional and confess he’d do anything to make this dark world a bit lighter for her.

The alarm on her comms goes off when he is about to reach out.

Perhaps it’s better that way.

“Someone’s in trouble,” Coulson says as she checks the intel.

Daisy nods heavily.

“Take Bobbi with you,” he tells her, a bit less worried about Daisy’s mission if she brings backup (she doesn’t always and the only reason Coulson hasn’t stopped is that it wouldn’t be fair, not in this situation) but also remembering Bobbi’s words of frustration.

“Would you get Gloria to bed?” Daisy asks, biting the inside of her cheek like she hates the idea of putting him in the spot like this, even though she knows Coulson adores the girl.

“Don’t even worry about it,” he reassures her, touching the small of her back as he hurriedly leads her out of his office. “I’ll take care of everything.”

“Thank you,” she says genuinely. “Again.”

He wants to tell her to never thank him for something like that but it would be self-serving to stop her just for that when she’s in a hurry.

 

+

 

When she comes back (for a change in pacing this time she had a successful mission and nobody got hurt so she’s in a good mood) she finds May relaxing with a cup of tea and a book in a the common room.

When she asks her where Gloria is the answer surprises Daisy a bit.

“You don’t think she’s a bit old for bedtime stories?” she asks, frowning, worried. You’re not her parent, she reminds herself, and Andrew would take care of it, if something was off.

“I have the feeling she’s just messing with Coulson,” May replies.

“ _Coulson_ is telling her a bedtime story?”

“She insisted _THE Director Coulson_ did it, no one else,” May tells her, obviously amused at the idea.

Daisy can’t help but smile at the mental image of that, too. The little girl is quiet and people would think her non-expressive but she feels attached to Coulson, who was there for her when her life changed forever. Daisy can still see Coulson’s horrified face when Gloria’s parents called her a monster, trembling hands over their mouths but unable to stop the words. Daisy was furious, but in a twisted way she also understood the parents. She was glad Coulson couldn’t. It was up to the girl to forgive them or not, one day.

She admits it had brought Coulson and her even closer than they already were, sharing the experience of witnessing the reactions people had towards Inhumans, over and over. But she can’t ask him to do more than he already does (not even a small thing like taking care of a kid); he’s already waging a war against the world _for her_. She knows Coulson would be waging this war even without her, because she knows his heart, but she knows he’s also doing it for her.

She says good night to May and leaves her to her well-earned me-time and goes to save Coulson from having a little girl torturing him. 

Because she worries that she leans too much on him these days (even for random stuff like just having someone _to touch_ , and she knows it’s probably unfair to him, that it’s asking too much, and she worries about boundaries, but so far he hasn’t said anything or looked troubled, and she knows he has noticed). She wouldn’t want him to be bothered by silly small stuff like having to babysit. It’s Daisy’s responsibility. She knows bringing her in from the halfway house is not the safest choice, perhaps, but she is not thinking about safety right now. Gloria needs something more than just being safe.

She walks to her quarters, hoping to catch Coulson doing something super embarrassing she can tease him about. But she as she approaches the room she catches a bit of what he is saying and she stops in her tracks, just outside her door. She doesn’t mean to spy on them but…

Coulson’s voice sounds so _odd_ as he tells some fantastic story about a couple pursued by some bad guy (she’s not sure, she came in halfway the tale). She hasn’t ever heard him talk like that. He’s very good at it but it makes Daisy’s heart sink in a more mundane way than she has experienced in ages. She knows Coulson would like a family but has given up on illusions of actually having one. And Daisy has always thought it was sad but in an abstract way (in the way that she has always thought Coulson should have whatever he wanted), not this very precise ache she feels all inside when she thinks about just what a kind, wonderful parent this guy would make.

“Then they had a little girl named Skye. But the very bad guy was still looking for them.”

“Oh no,” Daisy hears Gloria say, sounding truly worried. “Did he find them?”

“Yes, he did,” Coulson replies, tone heavy. “And to protect their little girl the wise woman and her doctor husband they had to send her away. She grew up with strangers, not knowing of her magical heritage”

 _He’s telling my story_ , Daisy realizes, almost making an audible noise and betraying her position. It would be too awkward to go into the room now.

She presses her back against the wall, suddenly feeling a bit unstable, and she keeps listening, knowing it’s wrong, too fascinated with the idea to stop, Coulson’s voice drawing her in.

The story continues and Daisy recognizes the twists and turns, though they are carefully masked or slightly twisted. And adapted into something palatable for a seven year old. Even though some of the heavy stuff is there - Daisy getting shot, for example, and there’s this whole thing about her parents falling prey to a spell by the bad guy that transformed them into monsters. Gloria sounds and feels engrossed by it, and only slightly unsettled by the bad parts, Coulson reassuring her with a turn of good fortune for the heroine after every hardship.

There’s one thing Coulson has changed she doesn’t agree with.

He has taken _himself_ out of the story, which rubs Daisy the wrong way. Because… how could anyone tell her story without Coulson in it? And in the back of her mind she worries that Coulson doesn’t consider himself important enough in her life. She rolls her eyes, _yeah, you’re only the MOST important person in my life, you dummy_ , she thinks and is a bit startled by how easily the statement comes. Not that she would ever want to deny it. He has always been that, ever since the beginning, since they met.

The tale goes on, and Daisy realizes how apprehensive she becomes as the story nears some version of what happened on the Illiad. She has her hands so tightly clenched in a fist that her fingers start to hurt.

“They three of them stood on the deck of the ship.”

“And then what happened?” the girl asked, her tone betraying she understood this was the climax of the story.

 _Then I ruined your life_ , Daisy thinks.

She holds his breath, waiting for it. Coulson’s moment of silence suggest he’s also thinking about it.

“The spell was broken,” he says, his voice steady and terribly sweet. “As soon as they found their daughter again they went back to being their normal selves and not the monsters they had become. They helped Skye destroy the evil stones before they could poison the air of the the kingdom. Then they took her in their arms and promised they’d never be apart again.”

“And what happened?”

“They never parted again. They lived happily ever after.”

Daisy hears a rustle of bedclothes, feels an incredible change in vibrations in the room.

“Inhumans and humans together?” Gloria asks in a little tiny hopeful voice, thinking about her parents, probably.

“Inhumans and humans _together_ ,” Coulson repeats in a bright, reassuring voice. Like he believes it. God, Daisy would want to believe it, Coulson has no idea what it means to her to hear him of all people say that.

Coulson stays a while longer as Gloria falls asleep. Daisy can’t see it but she hears a soft, rustling noise that means Coulson is tucking her in.

Daisy waits, hearing the light switch turned off, closing her eyes for a moment too, before she faces him.

But Coulson just leaves, apparently too distracted to notice Daisy is outside the door, turning around and walking towards the opposite side of the hallways. She follows him quickly, without a noise, catching up down the hallways and stopping him by wrapping her arms around his chest, and pressing her heart against the curve of his back. He gasps soundlessly, and his heartbeat jumps (Daisy can read his vibrations like she was hearing a song instead). Her fingers stroke the front of his shirt.

“Daisy,” he says softly, almost breathing it.

She wonders if he is ashamed that she listened to him talking to Gloria, if he wishes she hadn’t heard. But Daisy is so happy she did, she can’t regret it. She will never forget his words tonight.

“Were you here the whole time?” 

She buries her face into his shoulder, a bit embarrassed of this impulsive hug, even more than the whole listening in deal.

But she remembers the tale he told to that little girl and - 

“You gave me a happy ending?” she asks in a tiny voice.

She can’t see his face but for a moment Coulson feels like he can’t reply, can’t speak at all, only nod. He swallows loudly like he is about to cry.

Her hands are tightly laces over Coulson’s heart and he raises his hand to her, resting his palm against her knuckles.

Daisy lets out a quiet sob against the back of his neck.

“Of course I gave you a happy ending,” he whispers, like she’s such a fool, like how could he do anything but give her a happy ending.

Like he will always give her a happy ending.

 

 

**light**

“I want mom to tell me about when she crashed a car.”

The kid’s chirpy voice gets matched by Coulson throwing a judgemental look in Daisy’s direction.

“In mom’s defense,” she says, looking at Coulson from the corner of her eye. “It wasn’t my car. I had stolen it.”

“Much better,” he mutters under his breath. He’s probably worried about Daisy turning out to be a bad influence yadda, yadda, yadda.

The little girl is relentless and bunches the bed covers in her hands and throws her parents a very resolved expression. Oh so she’s picked _that_ from her mother already, great, Coulson thinks with dismay as he watches her.

“Please, the story.” Polite, yet demanding. And impatient. Oh god she’s going to turn out exactly like her father, Daisy realizes in horror. She’s very happy the kid got Phil’s magnificent eyes but this? Absolutely not. She’d better drop that asap. Daisy has had _years_ of dealing with that precise tone of voice.

Daisy makes herself comfortable on the bed.

“Okay, so there was this-”

“No.”

The girl gives her an annoyed look and Daisy gives an annoyed look back.

“Yeah, sorry, sorry. _Once upon a time_ there was this prince-”

Coulson clears his throat.

Daisy rolls her eyes. “Everyone’s a critic tonight. Okay. Once upon a time there was this _handsome_ prince who always wore dark suits and was very happy in his flying fortress, specially after he recruited this awesome knight who was an expert in computers for his team. But one day some bad guys kidnapped the handsome prince. You see, the bad guys thought he had something…”

Coulson shakes his head and gets up from the bed, he’d better get dinner ready while Daisy finishes here. He leans down to kiss her cheek quickly. “You’re awful at telling stories,” he whispers.

Some fifteen minutes later Daisy emerges from the girl’s bedroom. Coulson has finished making the popcorn and offers the warm bowl to her.

She eats, of course (Coulson is yet to see a situation where she actively rejects food, not from him anyway) but she seems oddly distracted. Not the kind of expression she normally has after telling a bedtime story (or trying to, because she’s really bad and derivative, and there’s a reason Coulson does it most of the time) to her daughter.

“What is it?” he asks, handing her a cold beer.

Daisy shrugs a bit.

“I know we decided to wait until Toni was a bit older to tell her about the whole deal with Inhumans and what she is but…”

“It’s beginning to feel like we should do it now?”

“Yeah.”

This is something they always knew what was coming. But while the girl was so little they put it out of their minds, and concentrated on developing their own style of parenting which consisted on making sure she gets all the vaccines and have fun the rest of the time, save a lot of money on babysitters once they discovered how to exploit Mack’s inability to ever say no to Daisy. But they always knew where the whole thing was leading: to them standing in their kitchen wondering if the time had already come.

She knows what her mother is, she has seen her on the news using her powers. 

“It won’t be long before she makes the connection,” Coulson says. “She’s bound to know something’s up. You know how she is.”

Daisy groans. “Ugh. We should have had a dumb kid.”

“I think that is all _your_ fault,” Coulson tells her.

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Her husband gives her a smitten look.

But he’s right - not about the smart stuff, although that too - Toni is about to start asking the real questions here, Daisy can feel it.

She has the Inhuman gene. They knew that very early on. They decided that though it didn’t matter either way they should probably know on account of enemies that might want to use that information against them. 

And they both know the world is never going to be kind to people like their kid, but right this moment, the way the world is spinning, it’s a bit safer, at least there are no news channels dedicated to spreading anti-Inhuman hysteria 24/7, the laws have been repealed, there are no dedicated government agencies working to root out the Inhumans in hiding. It’s a lot different than the dark times when the girl was conceived (they were so reckless, Coulson can hardly believe their past selves there, what the hell were they thinking, as if what they were doing was an act of defiance) and Coulson agrees with Daisy’s anxiety - maybe they will never get a better chance, a kinder version of the world, to tell her.

Well, in any case, there’s no way they are telling her on a weekend, Daisy decides, that would only ruin everybody’s mood.

“Do you ever wonder what kind of powers she might have?” she asks.

Only constantly, Coulson thinks. Running worst case scenarios in his head because that’s what he does. And he knows worst case scenarios, intimately, himself. He has been almost killed by a couple of worst case scenarios. Then there are just the cases that are not only dangerous but sad, tragic. He has always considered that, that Toni would have to go through something horrifying, if she decided to transform when she was older.

But Daisy’s light tone stops him from offering these doubts now. She knows them anyway. They have talked about them many times (in both hopeful and fearful voices, with darkness surrounding them, but never with the darkness winning the argument).

“I don’t know,” he tells her. “What if it’s wings? That would be weird.”

Daisy smiles, grateful that he is playing along, running her hand up and down his arm in reward. If she is lighthearted about it, maybe it won’t be so scary. She knows she’s the one who did this to Toni, that it was her blood, her family, her genes. Not Coulson’s. She’s never said that out loud because Phil would probably make this face where he looks like he is about to cry that Daisy cannot stand. He knows she feels this way, he doesn’t have to hear the words. And Daisy knows it’s wrong to blame herself (specially since she chose this, and she would choose Coulson and Toni every time), she doesn’t need to hear Coulson’s comforting words. It’s enough that she knows they are there, ripe for her to pick up if she ever needs them.

“I was hoping for something like super strength,” she says, leveling with him. Coulson raises an eyebrow, intrigued. He does like the idea of a Thor-like daughter. “But she’ll probably want to come on missions with me, eventually. Are you sure you can’t handle two superheroines in your house?”

Coulson steps into her space, looping one arm around her back, bringing their faces closer together as if considering a kiss.

“As long as she inherits your heart, I don’t care what else she inherits,” he says.

Impossibly touched by that line Daisy resorts to humor.

“Oh nice one.”

Coulson smirks, looking so proud of himself.

“I thought you’d like that,” he tells her.

He is already brushing his lips against hers and gripping her waist tightly between his hands when her comms come alive. Great timing.

Daisy looks at the message.

“A mission?” he asks, curious.

She’s the one who rolls her eyes, not him. 

“Yeah.”

“So much for date night,” Coulson comments, smiling and throwing a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

“Help me suit up?” Daisy asks.

He nods and leaves the bowl aside, following her to her private study.

They both enjoy this sort of ritual, but they never really officially agreed on it. It was something from the time they first became lovers. Coulson helping Daisy out of his field suit when she was too sore, it had started like a small kindness on his part. Then helping her dress before a mission just to prolong the moments of intimacy between them (the threat in those dark days, that it might be the last time, made sure they both took what they could, cherishing every touch, even something as simple as slipping Daisy’s gloves on her hands). Before they knew it this had become something fixed in their lives, their lives with so little room for habits.

Doing this at home serves as a transition for Daisy, too. She never stops being Director Johnson, being Quake, not even at home, not even shamelessly snuggled up against Phil as they watch a movie on date nights. But the boundary helps. And it helps having her husband’s fingers work her zipper up gently or work her gauntlets over her arms right before going out into the world to face god knows what danger.

It’s still arousing and electrifying, after all these years, his touch. And it reminds Daisy not that she’d rather stay here with him, but that she has to come back to him. There’s a difference and it’s vital to her.

When they finish Coulson steps back, like he’s admiring his work.

“How do I look?” Daisy asks, teasing him.

Many answers come into his mind. _Gigantic_. _Like a superhero_. _Beautiful_. _Please come back_.

“Like Daisy Johnson,” he replies.

Daisy grins. “Cool, I’ve heard she’s _amazing_.”

He chuckles as he walks out with her to the door. When they arrive Daisy turns around dramatically and slips her fingers along the collar of his shirt, grabbing the fabric and pulling him towards her in that slightly-clumsy seductive way she has Coulson is so familiar with.

“I know the norm would be to tell you not to wait but…” she drops a soft kiss on his lips. “Wait up for me?”

Coulson nods, letting go of her arm, slipping his fingers across the gauntlet he himself secured.

“Of course,” he says. “If I’m asleep, wake me up.”

She knows the selfless, normal-person thing to do is let him sleep, but she knows she will totally wake him up.

“Of course,” she says, turning around one last moment to look at him before leaving through the door.

Coulson lingers at the door, watching Daisy go.

All he wishes is for her to go on more adventures, and for her to come home and turn them into bedtime stories.


End file.
